Just a Mom…

Just a Mom… For several years before Adam’s assault, Albert and I discussed homeschooling, but we just couldn’t make up our minds. After all there were all those “reasons” why we couldn’t do it, shouldn’t do it. All those pesky objections! What about socialization? What about sports…what will the boys think about leaving their friends? Could I really teach them myself? What about math (said as my voice became increasingly shrill and panicky) I haven’t had high school math in 25 years and I didn’t understand Geometry then! What about science? Biology lab? CHEMISTRY? And what am I going to do with my kids 24 hours a day? What if I’m not good enough, smart enough, dedicated enough? What if I fail? What if the boys begin to drive me crazy? How were we going to pay for their curriculum? I didn’t even know how to FIND the books! What if I had to go back to work? We knew a couple of families who homeschooled who said they’d help us. One thing I noticed over and over was that their children had such good manners. Other than that, you’d never know that they weren’t ordinary kids…er…that they didn’t go to public school. But every time we got close to making a decision to pull the kids out of school, the questions would again loom large in my mind until they seemed to take on a life of their own. But I guess God got tired of my inaction. Suddenly the assault, in one fell swoop, wiped out all my objections…well, maybe it didn’t take them away, but it sure put my worries in perspective. The same year that Adam was jumped, Albert and I found ourselves dealing with another school related issue, this time with Joshua. Our youngest son had experienced difficulties in Language Arts since he started school. We ended up having him placed in Resource for English and Reading in the first or second grade. I assumed that it helped since he never had much homework. Evidently, though, sometime during mid-fifth-grade he was re-tested and, as of Christmas break of that same 99-00 term, he was deemed to be performing at grade level. That meant he would be integrated into his mainstream class after having four and a half years of extra help in Language arts and six years of speech therapy. One more time I trusted that the school system was doing what was best for my child. In Texas, public schools have a process for determining special needs education placement called an ARD meeting. I can’t for the life of me remember what that stands for…and don’t care enough to look it up…but, in effect, it’s a panel of experts to whom parents of students who need or request special help are sent to come up with a plan to educate that child. While structured to allow parental input, the reality is sometimes less than optimal. Those meetings often felt like I was being led in to the lions’ den. More often than not I’d leave feeling ineffectual and more than a bit stupid, especially after being told repeatedly that they alone knew what was best for MY child. I don’t know how to express how indignant I felt after being talked-down-to at some of those meetings. I was a professional medical office manager the time with a degree as a Paralegal – and part of me wanted to yell at them – after all Joshua was…is…MY child. How dare they think that they knew better what he needed than I did? Yet at least part of me wanted, needed to believe them! It felt like I was being torn in half. In hindsight, though, I find it humorous that this group of highly educated people managed to be so fooled by my then-fifth grade son... but more about that in part three of this story. I do want to take this time, though, to emphasize just how much respect I have for individual teachers. I know that my story is highly critical of the school system…”educrats” as Albert calls professional administrators who set up programs but haven’t been in a classroom in years. My criticism is NOT intended to attack individual teachers, the majority of whom I know to be kind and dedicated people who spend more time doing paperwork for the state than they get to spend teaching. They don’t make NEARLY enough money to do what they do! But, while the longer I homeschool the more admiration I have for teachers, the less I agree with the system! Albert and I didn’t really question Joshua being mainstreamed at the time, though. His grades seemed good and he liked not feeling singled out by going to the stupid kids’ classes (his words not mine.) It was only the next fall after we began homeschooling that the huge disparity in his test results versus actual abilities came to light. That summer of 2000 was a difficult one. Guy had just graduated from high school and the two of us seemed to be locked in a battle of wills – and I was loosing! Adam’s heart was wounded, broken by what had happened to him, and I found myself overwhelmed by the magnitude of our decision to pull Adam out of school. It was during those hot months that we decided to pull Joshua out, too. (We’d already promised Ryan that he could play football so he would be enrolling for one last year.) Suddenly all the things I’d earlier believed about who can best educate my children began to wrestle in my mind. I was just a mom. Who was I to think I could teach them? I didn’t even have a teaching degree. I found myself agonizing over curriculum. I struggled with the “who, what, where, when and why and how’s” of what I was going to do…and how best to do it. And I mourned the loss of those hours to myself during the day when the boys used to be in school. How would I ever keep my house clean? That July I spent HOURS looking at the different options for what I was going to use to teach the boys. There was lots of stuff for the younger kids, but what I found for my older ones seemed to be much more limited, yet, at the same time, the sheer number of choices. Sound confusing? It was. Remember Dr. Doolittle's push-me-pull-you? That'd about describe the way I felt. I sat at the computer and created chart after chart in an effort to organize what I thought we were going to do in an effort to convince myself that I could pull this off. I almost wore myself out with the minutia. I know now that I had lots of preconceived notions and concerns... only to find out later that many (most?) of my worries were slightly askew. Now I'm not complaining... exactly... because, over time we've figured out English programs and foreign language and how I could "teach" math courses that I last studied 25 years ago. We figured out the dreaded "lack of socialization" issues... which is almost a complete misnomer…all most homeschooled students miss is the negative socialization and peer pressure. The truth is that my kids are SO involved that sometimes I'm about socialized out... As I've continued to retell the story of that first difficult year of teaching my children at home, I'm continuing my journey toward finding peace about the difficult circumstances we encountered. In the next installment of this story, I'll share more of our journey... but suffice it to say that the most important thing I've come to grips with during this often painful process is that I'm not "just a Mom" after all. Jackie (c) 2004 Jackie Zimmer